Fall is just around the corner. As the weather begins to cool, marketers are beginning to focus on the first holiday of the Fall season – Halloween.

Experian CheetahMail has compiled trends from last year’s Halloween campaigns to help ensure this year’s campaigns are spook-tacular.

2011 Key Trends:

Over half of Halloween-related email volume was sent from Catalogers and Multi-Channel Retailers.

‘Costumes’ and ‘candy’ were key topics for Halloween subject lines, as well as basic ‘Happy Halloween‘

greetings.

Over a third of all Halloween mailings are sent in September.

Thirty-seven percent (37%) of volume was sent within one (1) week of Halloween, but only twenty-seven percent (27%) of revenue was received during that week.

Subject line tricks

Urgency in subject lines worked well for driving higher transaction rates and revenue per email.

You do not have to wait until just before the holiday to create a sense of urgency. Mailings in early October saw higher than average transaction rates when they included phrases such as ‘final day for free shipping’ or ‘time is running out to shop our sale’ in the subject line.

Halloween offers are popular, and mailings with offers in the subject line had both higher transaction rates and revenue per email. Offers that “treated” marketers well had ‘$ Off’ deals in the subject line, with over 60% higher transaction rates than the Halloween average.